Near Enemy (30 page)

But it was a woman who called me, Sam. A woman who hired me to kill Lesser.

Shaban speaks again from the backseat. That new voice. Not hindered now.

I know, Spademan. But trust me. It was me.

I look again at Shaban in the rearview, wondering what kind of game this is. Notice his wire-rimmed glasses are gone. Notice his clipped black hair, slicked back from the soft face, one cheek rippled with terrible burns. The rest of the face smooth and hairless, though. No beard. No hint of whiskers.

And then I know.

Salem Shaban never had a sister.

And Hussein el-Shaban never had a son.

Just a daughter.

As we drive, Salem Shaban tells me everything.

The rest of it.

She spills it all.

Alia Shaban was a genius programmer, a prodigy, and she was killed as a teenager in that drone strike, for all intents and purposes. Yes, she was pulled out alive, barely alive, and then she was sent to the United States, under the protection of a millionaire named Langland, and somewhere during that overseas midnight flight she was reborn as the brother she never had.

Alia Shaban died in the drone strike and was reborn as Salem Shaban. Langland knew, and had just enough pull to fudge the paperwork, and record-keeping back in Egypt was so chaotic that no one got too worked up if there was a gap in the official record here and there. All easily explained, and Langland stepped up as the sponsor, arranged asylum for Shaban as an extraordinary alien. This teenage boy plucked from the crisis zone. His father’s enemies now on the rise back home, looking to fill the power vacuum left behind by a missile strike.

And Alia knew too. She knew she had to disappear.

She also knew, in some part of her damaged heart, even if she hadn’t quite figured it out yet, that if she was to become the person she wanted to be in America, the leader she wanted to be, that they would never follow a woman. Especially not a teenage girl. Her experiences later only confirmed this. When Salem Shaban started his campaign to repopulate Atlantic Avenue. As the male heir, he commanded respect beyond his years.

No daughter could have led that movement.

Of course, normally someone like Salem Shaban would never even sniff a visa, but Langland moved quickly and convinced a
spook named Joseph Boonce to help. Boonce, who could work back channels. Who could arrange for a military escort and a secret midnight airlift. Who worked secretly and quickly and discreetly.

Off the books.

And Shaban, Salem Shaban, the only son, the living heir, the hacker whiz, the special child, was considered enough of an asset to Boonce and his fledgling project, Near Enemy, that together he and Langland marshaled the forces to spirit this special child to the USA.

Reborn in an air transport, somewhere over the Atlantic.

In the bathroom. Looking at herself in a round, warped mirror.

Her face half-burned and scarred and bandaged anyway.

Souvenirs of the missile strike. And once she arrived in America, she knew no one would think twice to ask how she got them.

They always expect anyone from over there to arrive with scars.

And Langland was right.

Shaban was special.

A prodigy.

Chopped her hair off in that air-transport bathroom and flushed it by the handful down the toilet.

Got fitted for a tweed suit on the day that he arrived.

Baggy tweed suit. Two sizes too big.

Became a trademark.

Tweed and wire-rimmed glasses.

A shy aspect, but with a brilliance behind his eyes.

Salem Shaban.

Please, just call me Sam.

Chewed khat all the time for the pain.

Became known to his friends as Sam the Khat.

Kind of like a Cheshire cat.

Eventually everything disappeared but the smile.

By the time he met Lesser, his new roommate at Near Enemy, Salem Shaban had arrived with a reputation for brilliance, shyness, and extraordinary modesty. Never showered with the other kids. Never even spoke of sex. Very pious and never had a girlfriend that anyone could remember. Most people chalked all that up to him coming from an extremely religious household.

And there were rumors too. About a sister left behind.

A sister killed in an honor killing. By her brother.

He let those rumors go unremarked.

Sometimes rumors are useful. Keep people at a distance. From this soft-spoken boy, Salem Shaban, the one with the sandpaper voice and the hideous scars.

Hard to believe what he’d been through, everyone said.

This soft-cheeked boy with ripples of burns on his face. Who could never grow a beard. Even later when he embraced religion.

Even when he left Near Enemy to become the Moses of Atlantic Avenue.

The kind of man that other men would follow.

Later, Salem Shaban, Sam to his friends, khat addict and fledgling radical, did his best to bury the last remnants of his work at Near Enemy. Starting with the theory he’d devised, the one he scribbled on a chalkboard, then quickly erased.

The one that lets you live forever in the limn, without any body out here.

He hoped to destroy all trace of it, and cripple the limn so it could never be used, thinking only then would he be free to leave his old life behind.

So he set out on an errand.

An errand done in disguise. Burns hidden. Voice obscured.

A black burqa was the perfect subterfuge.

Walking out in the world as a woman again. One last time.

And in her burqa she knocked on the oaken door of the Cloisters, where she would give a sect of Wakers the secrets they’d need to clear out the limn for good.

After that, there was only one last loose end.

Only one other person who knew.

So Shaban called me. Dropped the sandpaper voice.

Said a single name.

Lesser.

Hung up quickly.

Money cleared an hour later.

They’d been best friends once, so Shaban hated to make that call. But he knew that Lesser couldn’t be trusted with his secret. With his two secrets, actually.

After all, Lesser even spilled it to me, that night in Stuyvesant Town.

Not her. Not here
.

All that is gone now.

Lesser is gone.

Atlantic Avenue is gone.

New York is gone, locked down, receding and vanished in our rearview.

A moment ago, Salem Shaban was sitting in the backseat of my magic wagon.

But soon, Salem Shaban will be gone too.

I leave Shaban in my apartment in Hoboken and lug the bodies of Luckner and Puchs, and the two Pushbroom flunkies, out back of the building to where the minivan sits idling. Toss them all in the back, then drive the van to an out-of-the-way place I know by the waterfront, where I park it, tires half-deep in the filthy water, and torch the whole thing.

Abracadabra.

Magic wagon goes up in a flash.

Check-Off can bill me.

As for everyone else in the world who might care about four dead bodies and a bonfire, they’ve got too many other things to worry about.

I stand in the heat of the minivan burning and look across the river at New York.

Most of the lights of the city are out now.

All the bridges and tunnels are closed.

Cops and National Guard have sealed off every entrance and exit.

Tanks turning back traffic. Gunboats patrolling the Hudson.

So it’s all I can do, an hour later, to zip across the river and nab Nurse under cover of night.

Meet her at a pier west of Chinatown.

Just me and the outboard motor, still chugging, waiting in the black water.

I take her hand as she steps her pristine white nurse shoes off the pier and into the boat.

Mark’s still back at Mina’s, but he’s tapped into his own dream now. I’m not surprised, given he’d been in-body, trapped out here in the real-time world, for a week. Things he saw, up at the cabin, then in the train with Simon, he needs to drift in oblivion, or whatever chosen fantasy, for a while. I call Mina and tell her, let him drift, open-ended, I’ll cover the fees. She answers, don’t be silly, it’s on the house.

And Mina’s watching Simon now.

We still can’t bring him out and no one wants to move him. Mina swears she’ll take good care of him, despite their history. Sit vigil at his bedside until something happens. Wait and watch him, with her cross-shaped memento carved into her forehead. I’d rather leave Nurse but I need her with me now, and Nurse says there’s nothing she can do for Simon anyway. Simon’s motionless, in some kind of coma, neither here nor there, but worse. Boonce did something to him, but we don’t know what. Nothing Nurse has ever seen before.

So for now we watch and wait.

I haven’t told Persephone. Don’t know how to reach her even if I wanted to. Tried her phone again and it was dead.

So we leave Simon in the limn.

And who knows what Boonce is doing to him in there right now.

Nurse and I skip across the water with New York shrinking behind us.

Spray of the Hudson soaks us both as the gunboats circle, spotlights sweeping, but it’s not like I’ve never dodged a spotlight sweep before.

I’d left Shaban at my apartment, told him I don’t have a TV, but he should feel free to entertain himself otherwise.

Told her.

Told her she should feel free.

That’s going to take some getting used to.

She was too absorbed in her handheld anyway, when I left, watching the scrolling newsfeed. Looking for word. Finding word. All the word was bad. Especially for her.

—the fires on Atlantic Avenue now under control as police report they are confident the terrorists—

—make no mistake those responsible for Commissioner Bellarmine’s death will be found and brought to—

—a cell headed by known agitator Salem Bhukrat Shaban, now believed to have been killed in this morning’s counteractions—

—continue the temporary lockdown as officials work to determine the extent—

—Shaban, who it’s now believed may have played a role in the attack on Times Square—

—go to our national correspondent live at the State Department, where officials are expected to answer questions as to how Shaban, a US citizen—

—and police are asking all Islamic New Yorkers to report to their local precinct—

—want to stress that this registration program is completely and entirely voluntary. However—

—mayor continues to be confident that the measures will be temporary, though declined to speculate as to—

—officials confirmed the election will be postponed indefinitely in light of these disturbing and tragic—

—stopped short of describing it as martial law—

—new reports of another tragic death, as law enforcement officials located the body of former NYPD security consultant Joseph Boonce—

—being hailed as a hero, Lieutenant Boonce was apparently slain as part of a wider terrorist—

—go live now to the mayor’s remarks—

—this great malignant threat, living right in our midst, like a tumor in the body of our city, who’ve taken advantage time and again of our hospitality, but we can no longer—

Shaban switches the handheld off.

It takes us a couple days to get our hands on a bed.

Slightly used, but in good shape, and relatively high-end. It’s a bit of a shady backdoor deal, but a good find on short notice for what we can afford with what little cash the three of us can scrape together.

As for me, I’m dead broke. Left the last of my money roll on the front seat of that cab. Nurse lives in a nunnery, so she’s not much help. But thankfully, Shaban’s been amassing donations for a while. And had the foresight to amass them in cash.

In the hours while we wait for delivery, we watch more of the news, and it’s nothing good. Turns out the two cops, from Boonce’s detail, the ones who assassinated Bellarmine, both left flagrant electronic trails of apparent Islamist sympathies. Google searches. Emails. Damning wire transfers that revealed their concocted pasts. All of it expertly forged and impossible to overlook. Most notably, their supposed ties to Salem Shaban. Even planted those brochures, the ones Shaban was mailing out, in their apartments for the cops to find.

Shaban is now the city’s most wanted fugitive.

Face all over the
Post
.

Perfectly framed.

We turn the TV off and then Shaban tells us not to worry about her. She tells us instead.

Worry about Boonce.

Then Shaban explains to me and Nurse what it means if Boonce is alive in there.

If he’s loose in the limn.

Not tethered to a body.

Free to roam. Visit any dream.

Build an empire.

Spread panic.

Spread chaos.

Spread worse.

The delivery guys arrive and assemble the bed in my livingroom while Shaban keeps out of sight, Nurse makes coffee, and I make small talk.

Delivery guy jokes it’s a perfect time to start tapping in full-time.

You know, what with—

He gestures toward Manhattan. I nod, like we’re in total agreement. Say to him.

Crazy times, right?

Delivery guy nods.

End times, my friend. Believe it. Between the ragheads and the lunatics? End times.

Then the delivery guy mentions he saw the bullet holes down in the lobby. Denting the mailbox. Nowhere’s safe, he says with a sympathetic shrug.

I shrug back. Thankfully, he doesn’t notice the bullet holes in my apartment. I spackled them.

Delivery guy is one of those types who, once you get him going, he’ll just keep going, like a wind-up toy. Says to me, as he’s on one knee, hooking up hoses under the bed.

I mean, I used to think it was safe over there in Manhattan. But it ain’t safe over there. Then I used to think it was safe over here. But it ain’t safe over here no more either. Nowhere’s safe.

Nods to the bed. Pats it.

Except maybe in there.

I shrug again.

We’ll see.

Like I said. Small talk.

He and his partner take another hour to set it up, run the tests, make sure we’re hooked in, signal’s strong, plugs us in to a quasi-legal patch-in, which will cost us an extra thousand, cash, just to thank him for looking the other way. Whole thing winds up running into five figures, assembly included, and that’s the bought-from-the-back-of-a-truck rate.